I downloaded the Fedora 9 Preview Live CD today to have a look at how it was shaping up and compare it with Hardy.

The Fedora 9 Live CD did not seem nearly as advanced as Ubuntu's. Hardy's Live CD had a specific option to install, this bypassed loading the full blown desktop and iI was able to install on a system with only 256 MB of RAM because of this ability. Ubuntu also had the ability to choose the language you want first thing when booting from the Live CD.

Fedora 9 was better hands down as far as appearance and organization of the menus, but this has nothing to do with the system itself. I expected Fedora to have better artwork right off the bat.

I found that both Fedora and Ubuntu could not read files on a floppy disk. Ubuntu had a better selection of applications on the Live CD compared to Fedora. I suspect Anaconda took up a lot of disk space on Fedora.

Fedora was running a newer 2.6.25 kernel and had a newer version of Network Manager. Network manager produced errors on shutdown, Ubuntu had this problem but it was resolved.

All things considered the Ubuntu Developer's are doing something right!

No Fedora release works quite right out of the box. They're so bleeding edge, it just comes with the territory. A "stable" system is Fedora -1, which will be Fedora 8 (which is already Ubuntu-beating rock solid now) when 9 is out Fedora typically has a shakedown period during it's release cycle, because it's the trailblazer distro. It's definately not for the weak of heart or those who need thing to *automagically* work without configuration As I said, Fedora -1 at any given time is really the "stable" version. Fedora current is a glimpse into Ubuntu or SuSE 1-3 releases from now

Not defending Fedora here - it can be *quite* frustrating to a beginner to get going with - it's just a slightly different philosophy than Ubuntu

exploder wrote:I downloaded the Fedora 9 Preview Live CD today to have a look at how it was shaping up and compare it with Hardy.

The Fedora 9 Live CD did not seem nearly as advanced as Ubuntu's. Hardy's Live CD had a specific option to install, this bypassed loading the full blown desktop and iI was able to install on a system with only 256 MB of RAM because of this ability. Ubuntu also had the ability to choose the language you want first thing when booting from the Live CD.

Fedora 9 was better hands down as far as appearance and organization of the menus, but this has nothing to do with the system itself. I expected Fedora to have better artwork right off the bat.

I found that both Fedora and Ubuntu could not read files on a floppy disk. Ubuntu had a better selection of applications on the Live CD compared to Fedora. I suspect Anaconda took up a lot of disk space on Fedora.

Fedora was running a newer 2.6.25 kernel and had a newer version of Network Manager. Network manager produced errors on shutdown, Ubuntu had this problem but it was resolved.

All things considered the Ubuntu Developer's are doing something right!

exploder,

would you be so kind of testing and installing firefox2 from the fedora repos (i know it comes with FF3 beta).

Please test if plugins in ff2 will install.

the thing is i can't install plugins on ff2 in Ubuntu Hardy. I get some 203 error.

this will directly affect mint 5, so it would be nice to know if fedora also has that problem or maybe is just a Hardy issue.

I like Fedora, especially its newness and freshness and stuff. The only thing I didn't like about it when I first tried Werewolf was how hard I found it to install mp3 codecs, and my music collection is far too big for me to even consider converting it all to Vorbis. I know there are ways around it, but I find I prefer the idea of being able to use a system without doing a huge amount of configuration, and that's why I moved from Sabayon to Mint in the first place.

Updates messed up Hardy this morning, lockups, errors on shutdown. I installed Fedora 9 Preview while I am waiting for my daily build of Hardy to download on the Wife's pc.

I must admit Fedora 9 seems very stable and the update manager is much faster than I had remembered. Fedora 9 has a lot of cool system sounds and the stars change on the wallpaper. The artwork is better than ever! So far the only real bug I have found is the floppy drive doesn't work completely, same bug is in Hardy.

I will check Fedora out for a while. My main hard drive with LinuxMint failed last week... I am currently using an old 40 GB Western Digital that I salvaged from a Dell.

Fedora seems to have made improvements to their package management. I was offered updates three times in a row, and they were quickly installed. Hardy let me throw everything on at once.

What bugs me is that Fedora and Ubuntu both have remaining bugs. Fedora has delayed their release by a few weeks to work out remaining problems. Ubuntu is ready to release and already have the announcement up according to Distrowatch.

- Both Fedora 9 and Hardy have problems with internal floppy drives.- Ubuntu has an issue with Network Manager on shut down and restart. (The screen is filled with Network Manager information and errors, stopping USplash from working properly.This bug has been reported. This problem occurred on my system twice. I was able to fix it the first time but couldn't resolve it the second time. The common factor in the bug appearing was shutting down right after closing Evolution. - Ubuntu still does not have the bugs worked out with GVFS.

Getting multimedia working in Fedora is a chore but the base system seems to have an edge over Hardy. Pulse Audio is working better on my hardware with Fedora. The volume is better and volume controls in applications seem to have more affect. Fedora is booting up slightly faster than Hardy too.Compiz works slightly better for me in Hardy. I can scroll better in Firefox with Hardy.

It is interesting to compare the two systems. In my opinion Fedora is showing more commitment to quality by delaying their release to better resolve problems.

Don't take my word for it! Have a look at the Live CD's and compare for yourself.

One feature Fedora has which other distros need to follow is having an OS wide dictionary, so every app uses the same spell checking dictionary with the same custom words you have added. OSX has had this for years and now Fedora has it. Ubuntu will no doubt follow though.

I just discovered that Evolution is what is causing the Network Manager issues on shut down in Hardy! I was able to produce errors in Fedora by closing Evolution and rebooting. I did not get a screen full like Hardy did, but I still got a few errors. On Hardy the screen full of Network Manager info and errors do not go away, Fedora only did this once.

I just got 62 updates to Hardy, which really sucks. I had just been asked by a freind of mine to write a review for Hardy for thier Linux site, and I got the updates in the middle, which *really* borked my system. Right in the middle of a very positive review, no less

I had to email him and tell him I was going to have to wait a couple of days to do the review

Fedora has made a lot of improvements but the Live CD speed is horrible. In Ubuntu it is up and ready in seconds. Click on a program in Fedora and you will have to wait about a minute till it loads.It is still nice though

About 3 months ago I got Fedora 9 KDE verson for 64-bits live-cd, and just in the past week I tried it out again. Again, because the first time I tried it, I couldn't get my browser to surf after setting up my dial-up connection with kppp. So, I thought I'd install it instead to see if that helped. Nope. I ended up having to copy and past nameservers into the etc/resolv.conf file, which I've never had to do before with other KDE desktops.

The add/remove program gnome type package manager is terrible. It doesn't tell you how long a download will take, or how large in mbs the files are. You can only choose grouped packages, not single packages. So, after clicking on 'internet' and watching the progress bar go back and forth as it retrieved, whatever it was getting, I canceled it after 35 minutes. Of course, it uses kde4.0 which is buggy and this I expected. But, Samba crashed each time I clicked on it, and the last straw was a kernel crash on start up yesterday morning. I just thought overall, it was a pretty sloppy piece of work. It was my first time to try out an rpm package system, but I never got the chance to try it out. The only good thing about it was it did see and use up to 95 percent of my 4G of RAM, and I got to try out koffice's kword, as I never knew there was a KDE based word processor. I like it better than OpenOffice. I guess if I had to pursue it further, it would have been better to try out Fedora 8 or 7. But, for now, I'll stick with Mint and Pardus2008.1 as both are my kinda OS's.

First off, most Fedora releases are buggy as all get out for the first month or two. This is just the nature of the beast and part of the reason why many of us love Fedora. That sounds silly, but there is a feeling of accomplishment in being the first to use new software and making it work. Of being part of the effort and community to find work-arounds then solutions. After a couple months the release is whipped into shape and goes on to become a solid, wonderful, pleasurable distro. But one thing to remember is Fedora does not update the ISO, so even if you downloaded and installed F9 right now it would be badly broken. You need to update it first thing. This is one of a few reasons why Fedora live CDs suck. The fact that KDE 4.0 or 4.1 was still beta does not help.

PackageKit...I have read people's thoughts in here on it and am not happy. I will be honest, it is one of a few reasons why I left Fedora after all these years. It is broken at the moment, the developers are overbearing and it is just a waste of time. What advantage does it offer? A common GUI interface for the various package managers in various distros? Like I am too stupid to figure out how to use Yumex or Synaptic in a few seconds? It does not standardize packages, add a common repo, or really do anything that the various front ends do not currently do. And yeah, i have read the feature list and am not impresses. If/when they ever get the thing to work right then I will give it another shot, but to be honest I think Synaptic is the best front end and have thought this for years even while using yumex in Fedora. I cannot guide Clem's decision on this but my vote for PackageKit and Pulseaudio is "no!"

Lisa, Fedora is not a user friendly distro even though a faction of the developers are trying to steer it in that direction. I feel that is a BIG mistake and think they should leave Fedora how it is, what it is. It should not try to be a Ubuntu or a Mint. It is Fedora and attracts its own crowd. To really give it a chance you should wait about 4 months after a release, install it to hard drive then update it. This will show you what Fedora really has to offer. It is very fast paced, usually with 30-100MB worth of updates every other/third day and a new kernel every couple weeks. You can expect bumps in the road and you should be comfortable enough with Linux to roll up your sleeves, open a terminal, and copy the workaround given in the forum. But it is a tight community and they do look out for each other. There are some mighty talented people over there. In conclusion, it is what it is. You cannot compare Fedora to Mint or Ubuntu because the goals and philosophy are different.

That helps me understand a bit more of why I had some problems. I ordered that particular version from a Linux distributor. I read about using yum to install software, but I didn't figure out how to install it to run it. If I pursued it more, I would have learned how. Just the fact that I couldn't get dial up to work as I've done easily with pre-ubuntu repository Simply Mepis, and the current distros I am using confounded me and I gave up. Thanks for the information, as I will someday try it again after the 4 month period is over. Curiosity, you know. I have read someone said Fedora is better for servers.